NACL Teams Face LCS Financial, Poaching
Promotion from the NACL to the LCS is hindered by high costs and player poaching, making the system unsustainable according to coaches and owners.
Two teams from the North American Challengers League (NACL) playoffs will qualify for the League Championship Series promotion-relegation tournament later this year. The finalists will join Liga Regional Norte teams and current LCS guest spot holder Disguised in a five-team event for a Tier 1 spot. Note: Collegiate programs Winthrop and Marysville are ineligible for qualification even if they finish in the top two of the NACL standings.
Cupid Esports coach Samuel "boc" Boudrie described the allure of the LCS stage. "I was in China coaching team for the Asian Games back in 2023, and being up on stage and just in front of people, having that screen, the computer, seeing the other team sitting across from you, like there’s like this electric feeling," he said. "And once you have that, you want more." Contingent owner Jose "beardsandcats" Graham, however, finds the prospect daunting. "It’s not something I suppose that I can wrap my head around right now,"he said. ## The price of promotion
Qualification triggers an immediate financial audit."significant,"potentially exceeding a million dollars. Additional costs include relocating operations to Los Angeles."DARKWINGS" Chou, Cho "Rahel" Min-seong, and Choi "huhi" Jae-hyun went to Sentinels, while Lawrence "eXyu" Xu left for Dignitas.
This poaching risk creates instability. "An LCS team will come and pick up one of your players, and now all of a sudden, all that development work you’ve been doing is gone," boc said. He suggested one solution might be higher salaries tied to exclusivity contracts with buyout clauses to prevent established teams from easily taking developed talent. Guest spot teams must fight for relegation every year regardless of performance, making long-term player contracts difficult. "It’s just a lose-lose scenario here,"boc added. ## Searching for solutions
The system's sustainability is contested."Promotion-relegation used to have value because teams could develop and sell their spots for significant amounts of money," he said. "We moved away from that because we didn’t think it was the healthiest model for the ecosystem, and we wanted Tier 2 to focus on developing talent."
He noted that talent development is hard to sustain financially without the ability to sell players or contracts, and that NACL viewership is significantly lower than the LCS, making sponsor investment challenging. "It’s difficult to attract sponsors to Tier 2 when they can invest in Tier 1 and reach more people,"Greeley stated. Riot is exploring ways to make Tier 2 financially sensible for organizations."It’s just not sustainable,"boc said. Beardsandcats proposed a more drastic fix: removing franchising so only the worst LCS team relegates, not the guest spot holder automatically."Our goal was always to try and promote into LCS," boc said. "But if you start thinking that you’re already there, you focus too much on that, you miss all the steps that go along the way."
Beardsandcats won't lose sleep over the challenges until his team is closer to the NACL Finals. He called the requirements "worrying" given his current Tier 2 workload. "There would be a lot of changes that would have to happen for us to make it work," he said. He joked about the financial strain, saying it "would be grabbing some rocks outside and putting some water on the kettle because that’s where I’m getting my nutrients for the day." For now, the first step is simply reaching the position to qualify, with the next fixtures determining who advances.
